BJP-Shiv Sena tussle in Mumbai civic polls puts Fadnavis govt’s future at stake

If the ongoing high decibel Mumbai civic poll battle pitch is anything to go by, on February 21, citizens of the maximum city will have to choose between Shiv Sena, “a party of extortionists” and BJP, “a party of goons”.

This is not the usual name-calling by the Opposition, but how allies, who share power in Maharashtra and the Centre, describe each other as the campaign for the country’s richest civic body heats



up.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has been called a “half-baked idiot” and Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has won the sobriquet of being the “godfather” of mafias.

In the 25-year history of the saffron alliance in the state, forged under the Hindutva ideology, this is the lowest the parties have sunk to so far in their bid to gain control of Mumbai, a Sena bastion for the last three decades and a source of its resources.